The jury of a civil court in New York retired Tuesday, May 9 to deliberate and determine whether former US President Donald Trump committed rape or sexual assault in 1996 on a former journalist, who also accuses him of defamation.
After two weeks of trial, where Donald Trump did not come to testify in federal court in Manhattan, Judge Lewis Kaplan gave his instructions for more than an hour to the nine jurors, six men and three women.
They will have to decide whether the complainant, former Elle E. columnist Jean Carroll, demonstrated that Donald Trump raped, sexually assaulted, or groped her without her consent in a fitting room at a New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman, in the spring of 1996.
Disputed charges
Accusations disputed by Donald Trump, who intends to win back the White House in 2024. If they unanimously answer yes to any of these three questions, jurors will decide whether the 76-year-old Republican billionaire must pay damages to 79-year-old E. Jean Carroll for the physical and psychological consequences she endured.
E. Jean Carroll came out of the silence in 2019 in a book, where she accused for the first time Donald Trump, then president of the United States. She had initially filed a complaint for defamation, because he had accused her of lying to sell her book. Then, last November, she filed a rape lawsuit, thanks to a new New York state law allowing alleged victims to sue in civil court even for potentially statute-barred acts.
